I have 7 gb left on my powerBook G4.....

I will be working in the new P2 card format that I insert into the side of the powerbook..I have an external hard drive that has 500 gb of free space that I can have hooked up to PowerBook and all scratch disk stuff set up to go on the External...can i successfully work without problems, or do I need a larger hard drive put into the PowerBook?

Brian

How big is the internal disk?

A common "Rule of Thumb is" is to keep more than 30% free with 10% free being the limit before everyone runs and ducks for cover...

Ideally 50% free and your (HDD) disk should perform at a reasonable level. SSDs don't (shouldn't) suffer from this issue.


I have in the past run at 15% - 20% free with no real issues bar the slow-down of a full disk but only long enough to offload to a backup and free some space.



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I have an 80 gb hard drive..I was gonna get a bigger one this week..say 320gb or 500gb (internal) if they have them...

Well yes then - 7GB free you are running the gauntlet!

I recently upgraded my old MacBookPro to a 500GB HDD as my old one died.

You can get both 320GB and 500GB HDDs in 2.5" and its not too difficult to replace - there are loads of online tutorials and video tutes on how to do this - googleit.

I would suggest a 320 will do you for most things unless you do store a lot. It will save you a fair bit.

Try to get a Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm one if possible.



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OK..so I will upgrade to larger for better secure work flow..however...I will still be working with the external off to the side that is supporting the PowerBook by having all files download to external as the scratch disk??

Yep - you should not really use the system disk for storing video media - audio and graphics maybe but even they can slow you up.

If you want a good performance you need to keep scratch/media storage separate from the disk your system and Apps run from.

This is not to say you CANNOT or that it won't work - its just to say you should not because of the potential problems, skipped frames and wear and tear.



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Thank you my friend!

You're welcome.

Oh and if I were you - I would do a complete fresh install on the new HDD of your system and apps.

Then use migration assistant to copy over your files and system setup.

You may need to get an external hard disk slot aka "HDD toaster" and use this to connect your old internal disk unless you back it up first to an external HDD.

Carbon Copy Cloner [www.bombich.com] or SuperDuper [www.shirt-pocket.com] are both good for this.



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Quote

I would do a complete fresh install on the new HDD of your system and apps.

Yes.

Quote

Then use migration assistant to copy over your files and system setup.

No. The Migration Assistant is one of those things that works a lot better in principle than in practice.

I would agree MA does not work as well as it should for Apps...

...and I should have made it explicit that it should NOT be used for PPC to Intel as this will fail BIG time.

However it does and did work for me on PPC to PPC and Intel to Intel for files and settings.



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No migration. Disagree. Problems. Run.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

What is PPC...and Migration assistant? So..I can get a seagate 500gb for 60...is this good or should I get Hitachi 320gb?..

PPC is an acronym for PowerPC which was the Motorola CPU chip(s) used in the previous Macs to the current Intel Macs.

G3,G5 & G5 chips are all PPC

So your PowerBook G4 has a PPC chip. It uses binary code specific to the PPC.



Regarding the HDD I would recommend the Hitachi as they are the only HDD along with Samsung that has never let me down. Seagate are good but I currently still recommend Hitachi over them.

Regarding Migration Assistant - it is a small Utility App that is supposed to help transfer files, settings and Apps over to another Mac from a backup or your old Mac.

As the guys who voiced concerns above mentioned - it does not work as well as it should.

However if you use it ONLY for files and folders (email, documents, etc) and your system settings (login, users, passwords) then in my experience you should be fine.

Do not use it for transferring Apps as this is better installed fresh as I mentioned in my previous post.

Also do not use it for transferring from PPC to Intel as it just causes problems.



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